Chapter 2

Review of Related Literature

This chapter presents the literature and studies relevant to the present study. The related literature was undertaken in different school libraries. The related studies are categorized as foreign and local studies.

NATURE OF READING PROCESS One of the definitions of reading states that reading is a complex visual-auditory task that involves obtaining meaning from symbols (letters and words). It involves two basic processes: a decoding process and a comprehension process. The decoding process involves understanding relationships between letters and symbols which is similar to oral language and this enables the learner to pronounce words correctly. Comprehension skills on the other hand enable the learner to understand the meaning of words in isolation and in context (Mercer and Mercer 1993). Reading is a developmental skill which is influenced by a number of interacting factors. For example, phonological awareness is awareness of the phonological units represented by a given writing system which is positively correlated with reading ability in every language studied to date (National Reading Panel, 2000). On the other hand, Woolley-Wade and Geva (2000), hold the view that because of the substantial body of research spanning two decades that demonstrates the crucial role of phonological awareness in reading acquisition in an alphabetic language, researchers and educators agree that a conscious awareness of the sounds of oral language is a necessary precursor skill to the acquisition of the alphabetic principle. What is yet

unknown, however, is the extent to which this skill plays a similar role in learning to read in a second language (L2) and whether language specific factors increase levels of difficulty in literacy acquisition. An important question is the degree to which language transfer, or the influence of the first language (L1) on the processing of (L2) learner. It is possible that phonological awareness is a skill that is entirely linguistically interdependent, in which a general metalinguistic ability underlies phonemic analysis on both L1 and L2 regardless of similarities and differences in the elements that make up the phonological repertoires of the two languages. Reading means to read and understand the written material. If the effort to understand is missing, then it cannot be termed as reading. Reading is a complex communication process of receiving and interpreting the written words. It involves what is written and its clear understanding. Its process has four factors---- Decoding i.e. changing the coded message into information; Comprehending i.e. identifying the central theme and main ideas; Text Analysis i.e. evaluation and drawing conclusions; and Response i.e. action or reaction to written message. TYPES OF READING Reading is however primarily a mental activity. It is a skill, a developed or acquired ability, which can be developed further, refined and improved. Speed improves comprehension, reduces fatigue and makes for completeness of thought. Reading can be divided into three types depending upon the reading speed: Study with concentration in which every word is read and effort is made to understand it .Normally it is of difficult arguments, views and theories. An ordinary reader has speed of 90 125 words per minutes in it and a good reader 200 300, while 80 90% text is understood by them.

Casual reading or light readings of magazines, novels, newspapers, etc. which does not tax the mind much, in which ordinary reader has speed of 150 180 w.p.m. and good reader 250 500, with 70% understanding. Skimming in which the full text is not read and only the central idea or theme or main ideas are extracted. An ordinary reader cannot do it and a good reader can read 800 w.p.m. with 50% understanding. Skimming means reading something very quickly in order to find out more or less what it is about. By running our eyes quickly over the text we can get the jist or main idea without worrying about the details. Skimming is done when we: i. Do not have time or may not be interested to read everything in great detail. Our requirement is just to discover the main idea without bothering about its details. ii. Have to decide whether the book or the article requires/deserves a detailed and careful reading or not. iii. The skimming could be sometimes in the form of scanning, which means looking for a specific piece of information in the text, like a word in dictionary, finding out train time table, etc.

READING PROBLEMS Following problems are, however, faced in various types of readings: Vocalized Problem ---Some people read loudly with tongue and that reduces speed. Reading silently accelerates the speed. Lipping--- Reading with lips instead of eyes reduces speed.

Regression Problem--- Repeated readings even after understanding the sentences with a view if nothing has been missed. This happens when reader is mentally or physical tired and cannot concentrate.

Progression Problem--- When mind is elsewhere or one is not concentrating, then one reads page number, sees how many pages are left, etc.

Wasted Eye Movement / Poor Vision Span--- Average reader fixes eyes on words and then moves with jerks, which slows speed. Continuous, rhythmic movement of eyes from one end to other end of line accelerates speed. Moreover there should be wider / larger area of page for eye fixation to have rhythmic movement of eyes.

Failure to understand the structure of Paragraph--- Each paragraph contains certain idea, explanation or analysis and the start of paragraph is with that view and end is with conclusion. The logic of paragraph is essentially required to be understood, otherwise repeated readings would be required.

Distractions--- Same readers use pencil, finger, card or ruler for reading, which retards speed. Full page must be open in front. Proper atmosphere and proper seating posture for peaceful reading is also essential.

READING SKILLS Skimming--- First of all the purpose of reading is determined then a large book or long report is skimmed with the aim of getting basic information. Table of contents or abstract will help in this regard.

Proper eye movements so that eye span is not much, it is fixed on full page and eyes move smoothly without a jerk with only eyes reading and not the tongue or jaws. Reading should be with comprehension and concentration so that it is understood; critical study or scrutiny helps to find out the facts. It may however need comparison with other writings as well. Identification of basic words & sentence, vocabulary increase, understanding of structure of paragraph and studying while sitting in a proper manner helps in speed increase.

In short reduction of eye movements, minimizing regression (i.e. habit of looking back to see what is missed in first reading), minimizing progression (i.e. reading page number and checking pages left), minimizing distraction (i.e. eyes moved totally off the page), reducing wasted eye movements and poor vision span (i.e. movement of eyes in jerks and stopping after every word), avoiding vocalization (i.e. loud reading) and avoiding lipping (i.e. reading only with eyes ) can help to improve speed. Foreign Literature

Fielding & Pearson (2003) defined reading comprehension as the level of understanding of a writing. Proficient reading depends on the ability to recognize words quickly and effortlessly. If word recognition is difficult, students use too much of their processing capacity to read individual words, which interferes with their ability to comprehend what is read.

Many educators in the USA believe that children need to learn to analyze text (comprehend it) even before they can read it on their own, and comprehension instruction generally begins in pre-Kindergarten or Kindergarten but other US educators consider this

reading approach to be completely backward for very young children, arguing that the children must learn how to decode the words in a story through phonics before they can analyze the story itself

Gear (2006) stated that developing positive reading comprehension skills at an early age can greatly impact a students ability to approach new and complex concepts in many different subject areas. English teachers can use a variety of different methods to approach and explain new vocabulary and reading comprehension concepts to their students. Instilling in children a love of reading and developing constructive reading skills is the cornerstone to a complete education. Jarris and Sipay (1982) also gave emphasis on the classroom teacher. They believed that teachers are the dominant element on the issue of teaching reading. Their ability to recognized, nourish and channel the interest and needs of their pupils and to create conditions that arouse through activity and imagination in their pupils is critical. Daneman (1991) explains that reading involves several component knowledge structure that interact simultaneously during the reading process. In literature, a distinction is commonly made between two main types of process, via decoding and comprehension. Decoding refers to deciphering of printed symbols into language and involves perceptual and linguistic passing aspect of reading act related to letter, sound correspondences, word identification and lexical access. Comprehension refers to the understanding process whereby meaning is assigned to the text as a whole. Both decoding and comprehension are important aspects of reading, and comprehension is not possible without decoding. However, skill in decoding does not necessarily

imply skill in comprehension. Many readers may decode text quite readily but still have difficulty understanding what it is that they have decoded.

Foreign Related Studies

A study shows that it is through wide and frequent reading of printed materials that students in grades 3 through 8 increase their general word recognition, vocabulary, and spelling performance. Its a matter of reading volume. Reading a lot is one of the most powerful methods of increasing fluency, building vocabulary, and improving comprehension. Even the findings of the American National Reading Panel support the fact that the best readers read the most and the poor readers read the least. ( Cunningham and Stanovich.1988)

Interest in reading comprehension strategies began to grow as a part of the new scientific understanding of cognition that emerged in the latter decades of the twentieth century. In 1988, they observed that a reader is an active participant with a text and that a reader "makes sense" of how ideas based on the text relate to one another by interpretive interactions between what the reader gleans from the text and what the reader already knows. They proposed that a reader actively builds meaning as mental representations and stores them as semantic interpretations held in memory during reading. These representations enable the reader to remember and use what had been read and understood. ( Walter Kintsch and Teun A. van Dijk.1988)

Reading instruction in fourth-grade classrooms were also studied over the course of a school year. For many student readers, fourth grade is a transition year from "learning to read" to "reading to learn." It is reported that there was very little comprehension instruction in the

classrooms. Teachers assigned questions and told students about content. But in seventy-five hours of reading instruction observed that year, teachers devoted only twenty minutes, less than 1 percent of the time, to teaching readers how to comprehend and learn new information from reading. Her studies and the others cited above anticipated an intense interest in helping students learn strategies to comprehend and learn from reading. ( Dolores Durkin.1979)

Generally, many types of individual comprehension strategy instructions appeared to be successful in improving readers' ability to construct meaning from text. With the observed success of various individual strategy applications, there were several reviews of this growing body of scientific literature. In the study of Pearson and Gallagher in 1983, they categorized cognitive strategies by what teachers need to do to teach reading effectively and subdivided these strategies into pre-reading, during-reading, and post-reading activities.

With the success of the above mentioned strategy instruction in improving reading comprehension measures documented by research, students who received this instruction showed marked improvement on a classroom performance. (Harris.1984)

Local Related Studies The very first attempt to evaluate the reading abilities of the Filipino children was made by Martinez as part of educational survey on the status of education in the Philippines. Reading test which is one part of the survey included skills in paragraph reading, sentence meaning, and vocabulary. The result of the test showed that pupils were poor in reading comprehension. The reading ability of the Filipino children was in general 2 years behind that of American children. The survey revealed that the main cause of poor achievement of Filipino children in reading was due to English as a foreign language and the textbook used by the Filipino children.

Survey on reading abilities of Grade VI pupils in public elementary in Bataan was done and the study was about the general abilities of Grade VI pupils as revealed by the Gates Mac Survey Form 1.3 1965 Ed. The test included speed and accuracy, vocabulary and comprehension. Results of the study revealed that the subject were below the average norm of the test on speed and accuracy and vocabulary. The result of comprehension test was the lowest among the three areas.( Solibao.1985) A study conducted to know just how good are our students in reading these days. The results of the National Achievement Tests (NAT) administered to public schools gave some answers.

The Department of Education reports that there has been a 21.36 percent increase in NAT results from 2006 to 2009. The 2009 NAT revealed a rise in mean percentage score (MPS) of only 66.33 percent from 54.66 percent in 2006, which equates to an improvement of 11.67 percent.

The percentage gains were in all subject areas and point to a steady improvement in the primary education of the countrys public school system. Statistics says that there is progress in the reading skills of the countrys students but its not something to be happy about. A 66.33 MPS is still a rather low score. In fact, its at the near mastery level!. (C. Z. Borja.2007) In 2007, Bureau of Elementary Education, attributed reading problems as the main culprit for the poor performance of students in the NAT. (Quijano.2007)

While statistics and reports tell a solid and sad story on the subject, you need only ask any veteran educator of their horror stories to get a convincing picture.

An English professor, lamented the distressing lack of basic competence among her students in reading, which naturally carries over to their writing. My students have difficulty comprehending basic short stories and essays, she bemoaned. And this is reflected in their writing, which pains me to ask rhetorically, How did they even pass high school?

The sadder and scarier part of this is that these students graduate and set out into the real world with the (false) confidence that the diploma they have is an accurate certification of their skills. Employers will expect their college-level applicants to possess a decent level of communication skills of which reading is a foundation.

Beyond the job market, poor reading comprehension also has implications on an individuals level of participation in society. Those who read more tend to involve themselves more in current issues, cultural, political and public affairs.

Proficient readers are also more inclined to be active in community and charity work. They engage themselves in noble causes and make better informed decisions. A decline in reading comprehension also affects a persons performance in mathematics and sciences. After all, if youre going to understand complex formulas and theories, youd have to be able to read properly first.

In short, reading well spurs a person to do and achieve more, far beyond getting higher scores on scholastic exams. Proficiency in reading comprehension means proficiency in other disciplines. (Martinez.1989)

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_%28activity%29) (http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/reading/reindex.htm) (http://www.learningrx.com/reading-comprehension-skills.htm *Leila Solibao, The Study of Reading Abilities of Grade VI Pupils in Division of Talisay SY1974-1975, (Unpublished Thesis, La Consolacion College, Bacolod City, 1975)